


the parable of flight

by iridan



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: A Threesome That Should Very Much Happen, Canon Continuation, Canon-Typical Violence, Capable of Recognizing and Acting on Their Desires, Character Study, F/M, If Our Characters Were Emotionally Balanced Healthy People, Kind-Of Threesome, M/M, Multi, Spies & Secret Agents, Threesome - F/M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-18 08:16:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16114460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridan/pseuds/iridan
Summary: Napoleon disappears on a Thursday in November.  London has already turned towards winter; autumn was short-lived this year, crisp and golden for a handful weeks that Gaby spent drinking oaked chardonnay beside the Thames while Illya read and Napoleon fed the pigeons.  By late October the trees have given up their leaves, Gaby’s switched from breezy dresses to men's pants and oversized jackets, and even Napoleon has put away his favorite suits and embraced dark turtlenecks and thick sweaters.Illya, of course, greets the colder weather by opening the collar of his shirt and sinking into the chill like a bear into an early winter snow, but Illya's a Soviet.  English autumns are a summer day for him.(Or, Solo runs.  Illya follows.  Gaby is determined to get what she wants, even if she doesn't know what that is.)





	1. when love arrives

**Author's Note:**

> the working title for this fic was "a love letter to gaby teller." 
> 
> it's been three years and i still love all my spies. i've been writing this fic on and off since christmas 2015. it IS finished, so updates will roll out once a week or so. 
> 
> enjoy!

the parable of flight

_M_ _aybe love is in New York City, already asleep, and you are in California, Australia, wide_    
 _awake._    
 _Maybe love is always in the wrong time zone, maybe love is not ready for you._    
 _Maybe you are not ready for love._    
 _Maybe love isn't the marrying type._    
 _Maybe the next time you see love is twenty years after the divorce, love is older now, but just_    
 _as beautiful as you remembered._    
 _Maybe love is only there for a month._    
 _Maybe love is there for every firework, every birthday party, every hospital visit._    
 _Maybe love stays – maybe love can't._    
 _Maybe love shouldn't._    
   
-Sarah & Phil Kaye, "When Love Arrives"

_now_

Napoleon disappears on a Thursday in November.  London has already turned towards winter; autumn was short-lived this year, crisp and golden for a handful weeks that Gaby spent drinking oaked chardonnay beside the Thames while Illya read and Napoleon fed the pigeons.  By late October the trees have given up their leaves, Gaby’s switched from breezy dresses to men's pants and oversized jackets, and even Napoleon has put away his favorite suits and embraced dark turtlenecks and thick sweaters.  

Illya, of course, greets the colder weather by opening the collar of his shirt and sinking into the chill like a bear into an early winter snow, but Illya's a Soviet.  English autumns are a summer day for him. 

The Thursday Napoleon disappears—the ninth of November—is an utterly unremarkable day.  Gaby's the first one in at UNCLE, as per usual.  She likes to be early to make the first pot of coffee, to catch up on her reports, and to snoop through other agents' desks while everyone is still at home asleep.  Waverly's next in with scones for himself and Gaby, and then after him comes Illya.  Section Two comes in together, close as siblings, and then Section Three one by one.  The wind outside of UNCLE's little office block howls and rattles, wet with the promise of rain, and the morning starts with little fanfare. 

Napoleon doesn't show, but that itself isn't unusual.  Napoleon and Waverly worked out early on that confining Napoleon to offices and cubicles tends to lead to some form of violence, so Napoleon will usually breeze in sometime between breakfast and midmorning tea, scoop up whatever he's working on at the moment, and breeze back out to do his work elsewhere.  

Then he'll drop back in before dinner, return all of his state secrets to the desk he never uses, and take Gaby and Illya out to eat.  

It's a good system.  Gaby  _loves_ her little office at UNCLE's headquarters.  Before coming to UNCLE she'd never had a professional space of her own.  All of the mechanics at her foster father's garage had shared their space, jostling over tools and cars and the coffee, all elbows and grease. 

Gaby's office in London has a wide window.  Wood paneling.  Thick carpet.  A bookshelf and a view of the Thames, a windowsill that collects snow in the winter and birds in the spring and big brown leaves in the fall.  It's been nearly two years since the Vinciguerra affair, two years in an office that's really not much bigger than a closet, but Gaby still loves it.  

Illya likes his office too, Gaby suspects, though he won't come out and say it.  He's filled it up with books he likes and knick knacks he collects on every mission and three different chess sets.  There's a picture of his mother on his desk.  

But after all this time, Napoleon's office is still standard issue, clinical and empty. 

So Gaby doesn't  _notice_ that Napoleon hasn't come in to the office at all until lunchtime.  A forgivable mistake, she thinks, though of course she doesn't forgive herself.  Gaby is a creature of routine.  Most spies are, despite their profession.  Gaby will always be the first person in to work, Waverly will always bring in homemade scones, Illya will always take his tea with two sugars, and Napoleon will always do as he pleases.  

But on Thursday, November ninth, Gaby's feeling peckish around lunchtime.  Peckish and restless, her shoulders itching between the blades like a blow is about to fall.  

She can always count on Napoleon to be restless, so Gaby gets up at noon, stretches, leaves her work behind, and goes to see if Napoleon happens to be around and if he'd like to go with her to the Queen's Head for a sandwich.

  He's not in his office. 

Gaby almost shrugs, and turns around, and leaves.  It was a long shot anyway.  Their last mission, a long, drawn-out affair in Beirut, wrapped up only a week ago.  All three of them, Gaby and Illya and Napoleon, have been out of London for over a month and are still settling back into their routines.  It makes sense that Napoleon's out and about.  

Gaby almost leaves. 

And then she notices that there's still a folder on his chair.  Because Napoleon refuses to do his work in the office, Waverly's forced to leave all relevant work and information on Napoleon's desk.  He uses unmarked, nondescript file folders marked with things like "tax benefits" and "personnel audits" and leaves them on Napoleon's chair.  

When he comes in, Napoleon will collect his folders and disappear again.  But this folder hasn't moved.  

Frowning, Gaby sweeps her gaze over the office.  Napoleon is just as compulsively neat as Illya, but his office is even more sterile than usual.  There's no sign that he came in this morning.  

Gaby leans out of Napoleon's office and sticks her head in Illya's.  Illya's up to his elbows in schematics—likely trying to find a better escape route through Beirut, one that doesn't involve the city sewers—and does not acknowledge Gaby's presence beyond a quick glance.  

_Well,_ Gaby thinks, pained and dry,  _I probably deserved that.  At least he's looking at me again._

Beirut was a mess, in more ways than one.  

"Agent Kuryakin," Gaby says, to let Illya know she's here for work and not anything else, a distinction Illya always appreciates being made.  "Have you seen Agent Solo this morning?"

Illya finally looks up from his schematics, and frowns.  

"No," he says, slowly.  "I have not.  I have not seen him since we returned.  I assumed—well.  Cowboy was keen to avoid me, in Beirut." 

"Me too," Gaby says.  She's inclined to let it go there—Napoleon can sulk for weeks when he's in the mood, and Gaby poking at his hurts, real or imagined, is not going to encourage him to stop.  

But something twinges deep in Gaby's gut.  

Illya's eyes sharpen.  "What is wrong?"  he asks, and pushes his schematics aside. 

"Hold on," Gaby says.  "I'm going to call his flat." 

She uses Illya's office phone, ringing Napoleon's landlady, a sweet old woman named Stella who survived both World Wars and possibly used to work for MI6 before she retired to manage Napoleon's building.  Napoleon doesn't have a phone in his flat, of course.  He's far too paranoid.  But Stella's got a phone in her office on the first floor of the building, and she'll check on Napoleon if Gaby asks.  She's done it before. 

The phone rings twice before Stella picks it up and says, in her sweet, gentle voice, "Stella Godwin speaking."  

"Mrs. Godwin, hello," says Gaby.  "It's Anna Krause, Arthur's friend?" 

"Oh, hello, dear," Stella says warmly.  "How good to hear from you.  How are you?  How is Arthur?"  

"I'm quite well," Gaby replies.  "And I was hoping  _you_ could tell me how Arthur is today.  He didn't come into work, you see.  We're a little worried about him here at the office."

Stella tuts.  "That's not like him," she says.  "I could have sworn I heard him come down the lift this morning, but give me a moment, dear, and I'll pop upstairs to see if he's in." 

"Thank you, Mrs. Godwin," Gaby says, fighting to hide her sudden spike of anxiety.  "I'll be here." 

Stella sets her phone down and walks away.  Gaby can hear Stella's heels clicking down the hall, the creak of an old door opening, and then nothing.  

"Is he there?"  Illya asks, lowly.  

Gaby shakes her head.  "Stella thought she heard him go out this morning," she says.  "But she's going to check now." 

Illya frowns.  "If Cowboy is not here," he says, "and he is not at home, where is he?" 

Before Beirut, Gaby would have said that Napoleon was out walking London's streets, or in the Natural History Museum sketching birds, or in a coffeeshop dipping scones into black coffee, ignoring the outraged stares of the other customers around him.  

But now, after Beirut... 

Gaby isn't sure where he is, and she doesn't like it.  

Stella's gone for two or three long minutes.  Then Gaby hears the door creaking again, Stella's heels on the floor, and Stella picks the phone up again and says, "Sorry, love, I do think Arthur's out.  I knocked on his door and got no answer."  

"Thank you for checking, Mrs. Godwin," Gaby says sweetly, fighting to keep her tone even.  "We appreciate it.  I'm sure Arthur will turn up.  You know how restless he is.  I'm sure he went for a walk and just lost track of the time."  

"I'm sure," Stella agrees.  "Ta, love.  Do come 'round for tea later this week.  My nephew will be in town and he's  _quite_ handsome, and a more chivalrous fellow than our friend Arthur."  

"I will," Gaby promises, though she'll do no such thing.  "Have a good afternoon, Mrs. Godwin.  Ta."  

Gaby hangs up the phone.  "He's not in his flat," she says.  

Illya's frown deepens.  "Are you sure? Perhaps he wants to be left alone."  

"He always answers when Stella knocks," Gaby points out.  

"True," Illya allows.  He sighs.  "You want to go check his flat?  See if he is there?"  

"Very much," Gaby says.  

Illya sets his work aside and stands up.  Two weeks ago Gaby would've been able to read Illya's every expression, but now he's got his working face on, smooth and unreadabe.  It stings to see it, but Gaby knows she doesn't really deserve to know what Illya's thinking, not anymore.  

She puts it aside.  

"Come on," she says.  "If we hurry we can be back before lunch is over."  

Illya nods and lets Gaby lead the way out of his office and down the hall.  They're almost out the front door when Waverly catches them.  "Agent Teller!"  he calls.  "Agent Kuryakin!"  Gaby and Illya both stop, turning around.  Waverly's leaning out of his own office, and for once he's not bothering to hide the concern on his face.  "You better come up here," he says. "We've got ourselves a bit of a situation."  

Gaby's blood runs cold.  She's a good spy, and she doesn't believe in coincidences.  Napoleon doesn't show up for work, and on the same day something happens to shake Waverly's usually unshakeable calm?  

Something has happened.  

She doesn't  _run_ to Waverly's office, but it's a close thing.  Illya's right behind her the whole way.  Once they're inside, Waverly gestures for Illya to shut the door.  Illya does.  Waverly's office, like the rest of UNCLE's offices, is soundproofed, and with the door closed standing there on Waverly's cream-colored carpet is a bit like standing at the bottom of the well, all sound from the world outside cut off.  

"What's happened?"  Gaby demands.  

Waverly sighs.  "At oh-nine hundred hours this morning," he begins, "a Frenchman named Remy Pascal boarded Flight Two Eighty-Six out of Heathrow, bound for Thessaloniki International Airport in Macedonia.  Flight Two Eighty-Six left Heathrow at oh-nine thirty, left the United Kingdom ten minutes later, and landing in Thessaloniki about," Waverly stopped to consult his watch, "seven minutes ago."  

"Who is Remy Pascal?"  Illya says, slowly.  

Waverly's mouth twists.  He opens a folder on his desk, spins it around, and Gaby knows Remy Pascal before she even sees his picture.  

Napoleon stares back up at her from a picture in a dossier, his blue eyes rendered colorless by the picture's quality.  

"Remy Pascal does not exist," Waverly says.  "He's one of Solo's old identities.  Pascal was never officially tied to Solo by the CIA, but his name turned up often enough among Solo's old contacts that I did some digging."  

"What does this mean?"  Illya asks, voice rough.  "Is he on mission?"  

"No, Agent Kuryakin," Wavely says.  "Agent Solo is not on a mission.  Agent Solo is making a run for it."  

_then_

"I don't like this," Gaby said, peering into the darkness.  "I know I haven't been a spy for very long, but this feels like a trap." 

Solo chuckled, his laughter very quiet in the dark.  "It is a trap," he said.  "You've got good instincts.  But just because It's a trap doesn't mean we have to spring it."  He padded from Gaby's side, wandering deeper into the dark little room Gilbert Parrin had built beneath a rugmaker's shop in the Grand Bazaar of Instanbul, and Gaby cursed, following behind him.  

This had all been a bit too easy.  They'd been in Instanbul for nearly two weeks now, tracking Gilbert Parrin's movements through the city, and the first eleven days of their hunt had been  _incredibly_ frustrating.  Parrin was a ghost, a shadow; UNCLE didn't know who he worked for, what he wanted, or even who he was, really; no man named Gilbert Parrin had turned up in any of UNCLE's databases, and he wasn't in MI5's or the CIA's or the KGB's either.  

All Gaby, Solo, and Illya had to go on was a shadowy picture of Parrin beside Alim Barbaros, a wealthy and influential businessman who had the ear of General Inonu.  Waverly was convinced that Parrin was trafficking experimental weapons into Istanbul with Barbaros' help, to install a more permanent military regime in the already-unstable Turkey, but so far Gaby and her partners hadn't been able to find so much as a trace of enriched uranium to back up Waverly's claim.  The only thing they  _had_ been able to find was this room, listed as an apartment rented to one  _G. P.,_ currently of Istanbul and formerly of Dinan.  

_Partners,_ Gaby thought, watching Solo pace around the corners of the little room, one hand on the wall, his face cast deep in shadow.  

_What a joke._ When Gaby agreed to join MI6 to help them find her father, she hadn't intended for  _this_ to happen.  Waverly had explained the necessity of an organization like UNCLE before, and Gaby agreed with him.  What she didn't agree with was his choice of her teammates.  Gaby liked Illya and Solo well enough, but they weren't—well—

They weren't particularly  _good_ spies.  Solo was an excellent thief and Illya was an excellent tactician, but both of them lacked a certain—subtlety.  Solo never did anything quietly when he could do it loudly, and Illya  _tried_ to be subtle, but such a thing wasn't in his nature.  

Gaby's been with the two of them for a mission and a half, and already she'd been abducted once, imprisoned once, shot at twice, and had ruined three very nice dresses.  

She couldn't help but wonder if Section Two had the same problem.  Somehow, she doubted it.  

"We're not going to spring the trap?"  Gaby asked, dubious.  She remembered how easy it was to corral Illya and Solo into the Vinciguerras' clutches, of the madcap race through East Berlin, of Illya in Rome, his hands gentle on Gaby's hips.  

She didn't think either of them were capable of walking past a trap.  Illya liked to spring traps just to prove he was stronger, smarter, faster than his enemies were expecting, like a bear intent on breaking out of the bear trap.  Solo was just careless.  

Solo grinned.  "Not this time," he said.  "Look around.  Do you see it?"  

Gaby resented being talked to like a child, a little bit, but she did as she was told.  

The room underneath the rugmaker's shop was small and dirty, thick with dust.  Gaby could see the marks of tables and chairs and crates in the dust, great swathes of clear floor where everything was dragged out of the room, a hasty clean-up easy to read in the grime.  

The walls were free of pictures or rugs or peeling propaganda posters.  Gaby could see scorch marks here and there on the walls, soot where cigars were stubbed out against the bricks and streaks of ash where cigarettes were shaken.  The room smelled of dust and old smoke.  

"I don't see anything," Gaby said.  "This room's been cleaned out.  Do you think Parrin was tipped off?"  

Solo smiled, cold as stone.  "Look again," he said.  "Look closer."  

Dutifully, Gaby did as she was told.  Above them there was the sharp crack of gunfire, muffled through layers of brick.  Illya, providing a distraction.  Gaby spared a moment to worry about him and then set it aside.  Illya'd be fine.  He was always fine.  

She circled the room, studying the marks in the dust, the soot, the ash.  Something... wasn't right.  She couldn't put her finger on it.  Gaby tried to imagine the room as an engine.  The tracks of dust were loose bolts, the soot a leaking fuel line.  

"All of the dust tracks look the same," Gaby said, slowly.  "As if... as if someone dragged a rug across the floor, to make it look like something else was moved." 

This time, Solo's smile was a touch warmer.  "Exactly."  He stepped neatly around a large swath of clear floor, far more graceful than someone his size had a right to be.  He stopped just inches from the far wall, where dust had been cleared away from a set of grimy bricks in huge patches.  

Except, when Gaby looked harder, she realized that the bricks  _weren't_ as grimy as their neighbors; a space eleven bricks high by six bricks wide was cleaner than the rest, free of ash or dust or cigar marks.  

Gaby frowned.  "It's too easy," she said.  "Parrin... he wants us to think he was chased out of here in a hurry, and that behind those bricks is something valuable." 

Solo dipped his head, agreeable.  "What's behind that door is probably a lot of explosives," he said.  "Pressure-triggered, I'd imagine, by a plate farther in, to make sure whoever comes sniffing around gets taken out of the equation."  

Gaby whistled.  From what she'd read, Gilbert Parrin was the worst sort of opportunistic, fear-mongering war profiteer, intent on arming another military coup in Turkey and reaping the bloody reward.  Gaby fully intended to drag him to UNCLE dead or alive.

But a trap as tidy as this had a certain sense of flair and finality that Gaby could appreciate.  

_Ugh,_ she thought.   _I'm spending too much time with Illya and Solo._

"So what do we do?"  she wondered.  "It seems... wrong to just leave an active bomb underneath poor Mr. Tekin's shop.  I definitely don't want to get blown up, though."  Gaby considered for a moment.  "I suppose  _you_ can get blown up, if your curiousity outweighs your caution." 

"It almost always does," said Solo cheerfully.  "Fortunately for us, however, and for Mr. Tekin, I could also just cut the wire."  He held up a strand of rust-red wire, neatly clipped, and arched an eyebrow at Gaby like he was waiting for applause.  

Gaby forced herself not to smile.  She didn't want to encourage him.  "How did you  _do_ that?"  she demanded.  "I didn't even see a wire."  

In Rome, Solo would have just bowed and waved Gaby off, hoarding his little tricks like a magpie with a shiny coin.  But here in Istanbul, in a dusty saferoom underneath a rugmaker's shop, cracks of gunfire thumping above them, Solo beckoned Gaby over, pressed a hand flat against the wall.  

"Here," he said, clever fingers tracing the brick.  "Let me show you."  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          


	2. in calm water

the parable of flight 

 

 _"I could only think of you as being very distant and beautiful and calm._    
_A lighthouse in clean waters.”_  

-Virginia Woolfe, in a letter to her lover Vita Sackville-West  _circa_ January 1927 

 

 _now_  

 _It'd be easier to believe he ran if he bothered to clean out his flat first,_ Gaby thinks.  Bare walls and empty shelves are good ways to mark an ending.  Gaby sees an empty closet and thinks, fifteen years past being shunted from neighbor to neighbor, home to home,  _It's_ _time to move on._  

But Napoleon's flat—his stupidly large, sprawling flat, with its view of the Thames and its soaring windows, its bare rafters and smooth wooden floors—is full to bursting.  His closet is thick with his suits.  His bookshelves are crammed with cookbooks and classics, cheap thrillers jostling for space beside dictionaries and dog-eared memoirs.  A white undershirt hangs off the back of a kitchen chair.  A cup of coffee, only half-finished, sits on the table next to the daily crossword and an uncapped pen that's trailing ink.  The kitchen still smells like cinnamon and burnt sugar.  

So many memories crowd on the tip of Gaby's tongue that she can taste them.   

The shoes Napoleon ruined chasing a terrorist through knee-deep water in Venice sit abandoned in a corner by the door, peeling up at the toes.  The battered copy of  _The Sun Also Rises_ Illya gave Napoleon to celebrate their tenth successful mission rests on one of the couch’s armrests, a red bookmark peeking through its pages.  The dress Gaby left here two months ago, when the summer sun was blazing so brightly she couldn't stand to wear anything but her skin, hangs neatly on a hook by the door, pressed and wrapped carefully in plastic.     

"He left everything," Illya says, flatly.  All of Napoleon's painstakingly-collected art still hangs on the walls.  All his favorite books are still carefully stacked on the coffee table.  Napoleon's favorite tie—a pale blue silk that makes his eyes look like calm water, stitched with delicate silver birds—is draped over the armchair.   

A plain manila file folder is the only thing out of place, set a crooked angle at the edge of the kitchen island like it was thrown there.  Gaby knows what’s inside it.  She’d seen that folder in Napoleon’s hand, his grip on it white-knuckled.  It’s a formal document from the Director of the CIA, addressed to Waverly.   

Gaby hasn’t read it all the way through, but she managed to read enough before Napoleon tucked it away, out of her reach.   

The CIA wants Napoleon back.   

"He can't have," Gaby murmurs, tearing her eyes away from the manila folder and pacing the length of the flat.   _There's his new pair of shoes by the door,_ she thinks.   _There's the little pot of chai tea he hoards like a dragon by the window._ Gaby's holding the pieces of the puzzle in her hands, but she can't make them fit together.  She doesn't want to. 

"He can't have," she says again, stronger.  "He wouldn't.  Remember?" She points to the pale blue tie.  "He wouldn't leave Istanbul without that bloody thing.  Bullets raining down from every rooftop, and he made us go back for it." 

 _He's going to come back any minute,_ Gaby thinks.   _He's going to walk through that door with an armful of groceries or a weird lamp or a pretty girl, and then he'll laugh at us because we thought he'd run away._  

But Gaby's not a child, and she knows better.   

When Illya says, angrily, "Apparently he can.  He  _did,_ " Gaby swallows a hot burst of fury and says, as steadily as she can manage, "So what do we do?" 

Illya sets his jaw like he's marching off to war.  "We find him," he growls.  "We bring him back."   

Gaby and Illya sweep the flat like they've been taught, searching for anything that might help them find Napoleon.  Gaby knows he's not in Thessaloniki; Napoleon's too clever to stay in one place for long.  He's probably halfway across Europe by now, and if he's clever enough to disappear like this, he's clever enough to hide the evidence.   

But she and Illya look anyway.   

They don't find any sign of a struggle; no blood, no broken glass, no overturned furniture.  In the bathroom Illya finds Napoleon's fully-stocked shaving kit, and in the kitchen Gaby finds a set of dishes in the sink, already scraped clean.  She and Illya both do an inventory of his closet; all his favorite suits are pressed and hanging, arranged by color and season.  

Gaby wants to touch them, to see if the silk and cotton and wool are still warm, but she doesn't.  Illya checks all their linings and pockets.  He curses.  Napoleon's left all his tracking devices behind too.  Ever since that mess in Paris, Napoleon's consented to leave at least one of Illya's trackers in his shoes or his jacket pocket, so Illya can find him if someone tries to grab him again.  Napoleon’s the oldest of the three of them, the showiest, and the slowest; he’s been grabbed by their enemies three times now, and only Illya’s trackers have enabled Illya and Gaby to find him.   

But this time, Napoleon left the trackers, each and every one.  Gaby watches Illya count them all out of the corner of her eye.  Napoleon found them all, it seems.  Illya's hands are shaking.   

"Breathe," Gaby instructs, pitching her voice sternly.  Illya doesn't need gentleness, not right now.  Not for a—for a betrayal like this.  

Illya glares at her, still too sore from their argument in Beirut to take any of Gaby's shit lying down, but he does as he's told.   

"There's no sign of a struggle," Gaby says, rattling off what they know.  It will help to lay out all the facts all at once, like setting a broken bone.  "Napoleon's left all his trackers behind, and all of his things.  We can't rule out blackmail, but right now all the signs point to Napoleon leaving voluntarily."   

Illya takes another deep breath.  "I think," he rumbles, "you should tell me what you and Cowboy talked about, last Saturday."  

Gaby stills.  "How do you know about that?"  she demands.  She'd come to Napoleon alone, in the dead of night, less than six hours after they stepped off the plane.  Illya'd gone to his own flat for once, too angry with himself, with Gaby and Napoleon both, to want to be near them.   

Illya just looks at Gaby, exasperated.  "I am good spy," he says.  "And you were not thinking clearly. Neither was he.  What did you talk about?"   

 _Might as well,_ Gaby thinks, and comes clean.  "I told him that I'd make sure Waverly didn't give him back to the CIA," she says.  It's  _true._ As soon as she heard about the CIA’s demands, she'd started to plan.  Gaby has never had any intention of surrendering Napoleon back to the CIA; he's  _her_ partner, and she's not accustomed to giving up what's hers.   

Gaby'd told Napoleon as much.   

He'd only laughed, still half-wild, Beirut clinging to him like a wet coat.   

"Do you think that is why he ran?"  Illya asks.  "Cowboy ran to avoid going back to America?" The hard edge in his eyes tells Gaby that  _Illya_ believes that’s the reason.   

"I  _told_ him I'd fix it," Gaby says, stubborn.  "Waverly wouldn't—Section One is his best team!  He wouldn't let Sanders split that up."   

Illya shrugs with one shoulder, helpless.  "Perhaps," he says, his tone very gentle and cautious, like Gaby is a tiger preparing to bite, "perhaps Cowboy did not believe the situation could be fixed.  Perhaps he did not..."  

"Trust me?"  Gaby growls furiously.   

Illya shrugs again.  He doesn't  _say_ that, of course, but he doesn't have to.   

Beirut hangs heavily in the room.  Gaby thinks that's a little unfair— _she's_ not the only one to blame for that mess.  In fact, all three of them fucked everything up quite handily.  Beirut was a real team effort.  So for Illya to stand here, apologetic and maybe a bit righteous, like this is  _all Gaby's fault_ is— 

Well.  

Gaby primly turns away from him, trying to convey as much disdain as she can into the way her hair falls across her shoulders.  The rest of Napoleon's bedroom blurs.  He prefers lighter colors in his kitchen and the living room, in spaces he shares with other people, but here in his bedroom Napoleon's gone for storm-grey walls and black wood, deep and solid and reassuring.  Gaby runs her fingers over his bedsheets, the thread count no doubt higher than the population of some cities.   

Napoleon's bed still smells like him.  Wood and smoke and whiskey, a hint of sweet cinnamon.  Gaby has to leave the room.   

"I don't understand," she finally says, leaning against the kitchen counter.  Illya pads after her, slowly, and when she can overlook the sting of his earlier comment and study him again, his expression makes her belly twist up into knots.  "How could—why—" 

Gaby understands fear and desperation.  She didn't agree to work for MI6 out of the goodness of her heart.  Being backed into a corner is  _frightening._ It doesn't matter how old or clever or careful someone is; back anyone into a corner, hold a knife to their throat, and they'll cut themselves open trying to get out.   

 _But for Napoleon to leave,_ she thinks,  _for him to leave, he must've thought there was no other way.  He didn't trust me._  

Illya only shrugs, stone-faced, but Gaby can see that he's heartbroken.  She is too, she realizes, and that surprises her.  Illya's holding something very tightly in his hands.   

 _We're a team,_ Gaby thinks, looking around at the dishes, the bookshelves, the crossword and the stupid leaking pen, the blue tie and the shoes and the undershirt shirt, her heart twisting.   _We're a team.  We love you._  

"He'll come back," she says, low and fierce.  "We'll find him and make him come back."  

Illya opens his hands.  Sitting in his big palms is a box, a cheap piece of touristy junk that Gaby gave to Napoleon for Christmas last year as a joke.  Gaby knows what's inside of it as soon as she sees it, and the bottom drops out of her stomach.   

"I think," says Illya, and Gaby imagines Napoleon standing in his flat, looking at the accumulation of his life, empty of sentiment, "that Cowboy is gone for good." 

 

 _then_  

"How did you get the nicest flat?"  Gaby demanded, outraged.  The flat Waverly put her in was nice enough, if a bit small and clinical, but Solo's flat was  _enormous._ Windows soared up from floor to ceiling, letting light pour in.  Bare wood and clean lines drew the eye around the room.  Bookshelves touched the vaulted ceiling and a copper tea kettle whistled cheerfully from the gleaming kitchen.   

The sight of Solo's sofa, a dream of cream fabric and plush pillows, made Gaby kind of want to throw up.  In comparison, her own flat was a closet, and one with poor taste at that.   

"How did you get this?" Gaby repeated, walking around.  She couldn't help herself.  Everything was just so  _lovely._ Tasteful art hung on the walls, charming scenes of a [smoky London](https://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/waterloo-bridge-overcast-weather), of [dreamlike blue flowers](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/826/vincent-van-gogh-irises-dutch-1889/), of an [old ship tossed on a grey sea](http://kunsthandelpdeboer.com/painting/marines/a-seascape-with-a-passing-storm/).    

The injustice  _rankled._ "Waverly doesn't like you  _this_ much," Gaby said, incredulous.  "How on earth did you manage to persuade him to part with this?  Did he give it to you because you’re the Section head?"  

Solo, who'd been content to let Gaby roam around his flat in smug, self-satisfied silence, smiled like a cat who'd caught something small and frightened.  "Waverly didn't give me this," he said.  "This flat is  _mine._ I've had it for years."  

Gaby ran a hand over one of the bookshelves.  The wood was warm and smooth underneath her fingertips.  Gaby’s current salary didn’t cover real wood bookshelves; all her furniture was made of painted plywood or cheap, hard plastic.  She had one chair that was made of chipped cherry, but everything else she had was secondhand or cheap.   

Everything in Solo’s flat was real.  

 _I hate him,_ she decided.   

"How can you even afford this?" she asked.  "UNCLE doesn't pay you that much, and I'm sure the CIA didn't either."  

"The flat I won," Solo said, wandering in the kitchen to take the kettle off the heat and make a cup of tea.  "Back at the start of fifty-two.  The previous owner was a bit too easy to read at the card table.  The furniture I bought.  The books and the artwork I... acquired."  

Gaby shook her head, pulling her hand away.   She studied the neat rows of books, half-irritated and half-curious.  She and Illya and Solo had been partners for over a month now.  Between Rome and Istanbul they'd all saved each other's lives half a dozen times, averted nuclear proliferation twice, and scandalized the members of at least three distinct national parliaments.   

But Gaby still felt like she didn't know Solo at all.   

He was hard to know.  Illya was much easier, and Gaby knew that she herself was something of an open book.  But Solo was a chimaera, a shapeshifter; Gaby couldn't ever tell when he was being genuine or when he was playing a role.  Gaby was a fairly good actress—the Vinciguerra affair was proof enough of that—but Solo changed masks so quickly and so seamlessly that Gaby sometimes wondered if he was human at all and not some sort of computerized creature turned loose by the Americans.   

Gaby studied Solo's rows and rows of books, trying to find the man behind the masks.   

He liked mystery novels, the real Napoleon Solo.  Mysteries and biographies, history books and classic literature.  Some of the books had been read so often that their spines were broken.  Others looked like they’d just come off the printing press.   

 _He’s a reader,_ Gaby thought.   _Like Illya._  

Of course, she was assuming that the Solo she saw here in this flat, surrounded by his books and his art and his fine expensive furniture like a magpie in its nest, was the real Solo.  She was assuming that there  _was_ a real Solo; it was also entirely possible that Solo had changed faces and personalities and suits so often that there was no real man underneath at all.  Gaby might try and strip him bare only to find him completely hollow, a scarecrow stuffed with straw.   

The image made her smile.   

“Something funny, Ms. Teller?”  Solo was smiling too, a lopsided half-grin that showed off his slightly-crooked teeth.  The sunlight streaming through his windows made his hair very dark and his eyes very blue.   

He was, Gaby thought, playing another role.  She’d seen him do in Istanbul.  Everything about Solo, from the way he looked in the sun to the way he was leaning against the counter, was calculated to make him more attractive, more charming.   

And he  _was_ attractive, in a statuesque sort of way.  He was tall (though not, of course, as tall as Illya), broad-shouldered, and handsome, with a deep chest and graceful hands.  His dark hair suited his color, and his crooked teeth only added to his charm.   

If Gaby was a mark instead of a spy in her own right, she‘d be very interested.   

“Funny?”  Gaby said, aiming for flirtatious.  “Why Mr. Solo, there‘s nothing funny here at all.” 

“You should read one of the Austens.”  Solo relaxed, just a little, some of his very potent charm softening, like a cat tucking away its claws.  “They’re all hilarious.”   

“I didn’t take you for a romantic,” Gaby said, returning her attention to the minutiae of Solo’s life.   

All of his dishes were neatly stacked in open-fronted cabinets, but when Gaby looked closer she saw that they were all mismatched, as though they’d been lifted one by one out of other people’s lives.   

This time, her smile was more genuine.   

“You’re okay with letting Waverly know about this place?” Gaby asked.  “There’s no way you told the CIA about it.”  

Solo inclined his head.  “Waverly is considerably smarter than the CIA,” he said.  “Not that that’s an especially high bar for him to clear.  I thought it best to get this flat, and a few other properties I’ve got in the city, out in the open, so that Waverly’s got it on record.  Also, my electric bill is expensive.”   

 “You don’t want him to take it from you,” Gaby realized.  “You like this place; you don’t want Waverly to find out that you’ve been hiding all this and take it away.  You think that if he knows about it going in, he’s less likely to take offense to you living like a... like a...”  

“Like a what, Gaby?”  Solo asked, affecting a wounded expression.  But he was pleased, Gaby could tell.  He was pleased that she’d caught on to his strategy.  She was reminded of Solo underneath the rug shop in Istanbul.  He’d taught her something then, too, and had been delighted when she’d caught on before he’d even finished explaining.   

“Like a sticky-fingered thief,” she said, rolling her eyes.   

Solo grinned.  “If the shoe fits,” he said, gesturing at his own polished oxfords.  “I don’t like moving.  It’s too much effort.  I’d rather keep this place, even if Waverly knows about it, than have to pack all of this up and cram it all into a smaller flat.” 

Gaby eyed all of Solo’s things, his books and his furniture and his mismatched dishes.  Here, in a a flat with soaring ceilings and tall windows, Solo’s flat was comfortable and sophisticated, masculine without being severe.  In a smaller flat, everything would look like  _clutter,_ like Solo was trying too hard to fit a certain mold, like he was trying to be someone he wasn’t.   

Solo hated to look like he was trying.  He liked to appear as though everything were effortless; seducing women, stealing art, cracking safes.   

“I want to live here,” Gaby announced.  Just yesterday she’d been happy with her own flat, with its ugly white walls and tiny windows, its tiny cramped kitchen, its plywood furniture.  But now she wanted— 

She wanted— 

“If you can ever figure out how to beat me at poker, it’s yours,” said Solo, still grinning.  Gaby couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or not.  She narrowed her eyes.  

“When you say it like that, it makes me think that you cheat at poker.”  

“Me, cheat?”  Solo said, his eyes bright.  “I never cheat.  I just get lucky.  Now, Ms. Teller, tell me; what happened between you and Illya underneath Parrin’s safehouse?”   

Solo was just trying to distract Gaby, to deflect her away from the conversation, and she knew what he was doing but it worked anyway.Gaby flushed bright red, torn between glaring at Solo and looking away.   

“Nothing happened,” Gaby said.   

Solo’s grin grew.  “Oh?  That’s not what Peril said.  When I asked  _him_ he said that it was none of my business.” 

“It isn’t,” Gaby hissed.  Illya was incapable of lying convincingly—he had atrocious tells.  Not that Gaby was doing any better; the look in Solo’s eyes told her that he knew  _exactly_ what had happened in that little room underneath Parrin’s safehouse.   

And really, it wasn’t as though anything  _that_ untoward had happened.  Gaby and Illya had been attacked, that was all, and when Illya had killed their attacker Gaby had maybe been a bit overwhelmed with relief and lust and adrenaline, and she’d kissed him. Then they’d gone back up into the safehouse proper, helped Solo disarm a bomb, shot Parrin in the head, and saved the day.   

Everything untoward had happened on the plane home, while Solo slept off a bad blow to the head and Gaby patched up Illya’s shoulder.  Cleaning his wound had turned into kissing, kissing had turned into touching, and touching had turned into fucking while the plane shuddered and groaned around them.  

Solo’d slept through the whole thing.   

“We’re a team now, my dear,” said Solo, unbothered by Gaby’s annoyance.  “It’s a little bit my business.  Don’t worry.  I won’t rat you out to Waverly.”   

“It’s nothing,” Gaby growled.  She wasn’t a child—she knew that this...  _infatuation_ with Illya wouldn’t last very long.  They were spies.  Attachments were dangerous.  Yes, Gaby liked Illya.  She liked Solo too.  But they were her partners, her teammates.  Solo was CIA and Illya was KGB.  They were all UNCLE now, but Gaby knew that Solo and Illya both had loyalties outside of the new life she was building here in London.   

She wasn’t stupid.  She and Illya could be lovers for a season, but longer than that...  

“It’s nothing,” Gaby repeated, fighting to keep her tone even, her face still.   

Solo’s grin faded.  His eyes sharpened.  “That was better,” he said, peering at her intently.  “Keep saying that.  I mean it,” he added, when Gaby’s expression went flat and she drew herself up to yell at him.  “When you get home, practice saying that in the mirror.  The more you lie, the easier it is.”  

Hot anger bubbled up in Gaby’s chest.  “I’m not lying,” she spat.   

Solo shrugged, easy, with one shoulder.  “You’re a spy now, Ms. Teller,” he said.  “All we do is lie.  The sooner you get better at it, the more you’ll like your job.”   

 _Arguing with him isn’t going to get me anywhere,_ Gaby thought, furious.  The problem was that she  _liked_ Solo.  The problem was that he was right.  But Gaby didn’t want to admit that, and she didn’t want to let Solo drag her into an argument she couldn’t win.   

So Gaby did the only thing she could do; she grabbed her bag, swung it over her shoulder, shot Solo one last poisonous look, and left his flat, letting the door slam behind her.  Illya would be more accommodating, and less likely to bring up unpleasant things that Gaby didn’t want to think about.  And if Illya  _did_ annoy her, they could just fuck until Gaby wasn’t annoyed anymore.   

 _Who needs Napoleon Solo anyway?_ Gaby wondered.   _He’s a terrible spy, and not a particularly good person either._  

But as she walked away, her footsteps echoing down the hall, she couldn’t help but shake the feeling that Solo had been trying to help.     
 

 

  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> History Notes:   
> 1\. The paintings in Solo's apartment are, in order; "Waterloo Bridge, Overcast Weather," by Monet; "Irises," by Van Gogh; and "A Seascape with a passing storm," by Willem van de Velde the Younger. None of these paintings are stolen or missing, but I have a soft spot for all of them and think they'd look nice if displayed together by an amoral kleptomaniac.   
> 2\. I'm almost positive that Solo's aftershave/cologne is Old Spice. Can't mess with the classics.


	3. the way bodies don't matter

the parable of flight 

 

 _I was pretending you meant nothing_    
_in the way bodies don’t matter_    
_unless you’ve decided they’re everything._    
   
-emily o’neil, from “how it started” 

 

 _now_  

Gaby books two plane tickets to Paris from Stella’s office.  She and Illya have a brief argument over where to go—Illya wants to start their search in Thessaloniki, where Napoleon stepped off his plane as Remy Pascal, but Gaby knows there’s no point.  Remy Pascal won’t show up again anywhere else.  By now Napoleon will have changed names two or three times, stepping out of each one as easily as a pair of shoes.   

Running after him won’t help Gaby and Illya find him; their best chance is to guess where he’s going to be and beat him there.   

Gaby and Illya argue about it viciously for a moment, but Gaby wins.   

“It’s not like we even know how many identities he has ready,” she points out, waspish.  Gaby herself has five identities ready to go, if she has to run.  Illya has nine.  Napoleon likely has more.  UNCLE identities, CIA identities, names and faces from his time as a thief.   

“He was caught in Paris last time,” Illya argues, frowning hard.  “Cowboy would not stupid enough to try and hide there again.”  

“He loves Paris,” Gaby says.  It’s true; she’s rarely seen Napoleon as happy and relaxed as he is in a café on the Seine, sipping dark wine and teaching Gaby how to dance, his feet light on the cobblestones.  “And he has friends there, still.”  

Napoleon has friends everywhere.  Waverly made him Number One of Section One on a technicality, because even though his service is involuntary Napoleon has three more years’ experience in the field than Illya and a decade more than Gaby, but Napoleon  _is_ qualified to lead their little section, despite what Gaby’d thought at the time of his promotion.  He knows  _everyone._  

Rugmakers in Istanbul, café owners in Paris, waitresses in Kiev, monks in Bhutan.  He has friends at the tops of state governments and the bottoms of vicious gangs.  He knows people in palaces and poorhouses.  Cathedrals and catacombs.  Half the world seems to owe Napoleon a favor or a debt, and the other half collapses underneath his charm.   

When he’d been a thief, Napoleon had worked most often out of Paris.  He still knows a good number of people there and some of those people knew him back when he was lifting and moving art.  There’s a better chance of finding Napoleon through one of them than going to Thessaloniki and praying that Remy Pascal left a trail of breadcrumbs.     

Illya finally relents.  “Paris first,” he agrees.  “Then Thessaloniki.  I do not want trail to get too cold.  Cowboy is clever.”   

Stella, Napoleon’s landlady, always goes out for lunch with her daughter-in-law at one o’clock precisely.  Gaby picks the lock in half a second and slips into her office, catching the little pigeon’s feather Stella left between the door and the frame before it hits the ground.   

She shows Illya.  “I told you she was MI6,” Gaby says.  Illya examines the feather, grudgingly impressed.   

“A good trick,” he says.  “Do not touch anything but the phone.  If Ms. Godwin left one trap to catch intruders, she will have left more.”   

Gaby doesn’t need Illya to tell her that— _she's_  not the one who tripped the wire in Sao Paulo and brought half a Catholic church down on their heads—but she nods anyway.  Finding Napoleon before anyone else does is more important than antagonizing Illya.  

She wraps her hand in her scarf and dials the operator with a pen she filches out of Illya’s pocket.   

“Heathrow, please,” she says, brusque, in as thick a Spanish accent as she can manage.  The operator transfers her without complaint, and when Heathrow picks up, Gaby says, in a much lighter French lilt, “ _Bonjour Madame._ I need two tickets to Paris, please.”  

The receptionist is very polite and speaks good French; Gaby’s own grasp of the language is decent enough to pass as a native to a foreigner, so by the time she’s finished booking two tickets on the four o’clock plane to Le Bourget, the receptionist thinks that Gaby is a charming young French national named Marie Donadieu, returning home to Paris with her husband Claude. 

The fiction won’t fool Napoleon should he start looking at Paris to cover his tracks, but it’s good enough for now.   

When she’s done Gaby hangs up the phone, wraps her scarf back around her neck, and gives Illya back his pen.  They both back out of Stella’s office, careful not to touch anything, and Illya puts the little pigeon’s feather back in the door where Gaby found it.  They lock the office behind them, wipe down the door handle just in case, and leave the building side-by-side.   

 _We probably won’t come back here,_ Gaby thinks.  She doesn’t know how she feels about that.  If they can find Napoleon— _not if,_ she corrects herself,  _when_ —will Waverly let him come back to this flat?  To this life that he left behind so easily?  Will life start again the same as it had been before? 

“Our plane leaves in two and a half hours,” Gaby says, to stave off any other uncomfortable or unpleasant conversations.  She doesn’t know what Illya is feeling either.  His face is as still as a stone.  It would be better if he were upset.  Gaby knows how to handle Illya when he’s upset.  She knows how to talk him down, how to calm him, how to turn his trembling fury into something productive.   

But this—this is new, this stone-faced Illya.  He came out of Beirut.  Gaby hasn’t had time to learn him yet.  Illya hasn’t let her.   

“Pack lightly,” says Illya, curtly.  “I will meet you at airport.  I must speak with Waverly.”   

This time Gaby doesn’t argue, though Illya’s cold tone cuts like a knife.  She and Illya split up at the tube, Illya on the District line and Gaby on the Circle to jump over to the Northern at Baker Street.  She doesn’t like watching Illya walk away from her.  She never has.   

She takes the contents of Napoleon’s box out of her pocket instead, flipping through them while the train sways and groans around her.   

The box had been full of pictures.  Hastily-snapped, blurry things, most of them, though there are a few nice crisp photographs in the pile.  They’re of Section One.  Gaby and Illya in Istanbul, Gaby lying on the beach with an arm flung over her eyes and Illya sitting still as a mountain beside her, very obviously standing guard.  Illya in a suit so sharp it could cut, preparing to dance with an heiress in Tokyo.  Gaby on a safari in Africa, laughing as a giraffe ate broad green leaves from her hands.  Napoleon and Illya arguing in a kitchen in Mykonos, the walls white and chipped, Napoleon kneading bread with his sleeves pushed up to his elbows and Illya with flour dusting his cheek, waving a copy of  _War and Peace_ like a sword.  All three of them collapsed on a plane, curled up like puppies.   

 _I wonder who took this one,_ Gaby thinks, running a thumbnail down the photograph’s glossy edge.  In the picture, Gaby’s head is pillowed on Illya’s shoulder and her legs fall across Napoleon’s lap.  All three of them are asleep, Illya with his chin propped up by the heel of his hand, Napoleon tilted back against the seat, one hand wrapped up in thick white bandages and the other curled over one of Gaby’s ankles.   

There are other pictures, too.  Older ones, a few in color but most rendered in black and white, all of them without dates or labels.  A picture of Venice, half-drowned in the winter flood.  A man in Army fatigues with long, unbound black hair falling around his solemn face.  A young woman in Paris, her hair and her scarf blown behind her in the wind, a wide smile on her face.  An ice-covered house on a mountain somewhere, the roof buckling under the weight of the snow, a dark-haired woman standing half-out of focus with her arm slung around the narrow shoulders of a dark-haired little boy.   

The significance of the photographs is lost on Gaby.  She’s got a good memory, but Napoleon’s is better.  He doesn’t need dates or labels.  For Napoleon, the color of someone’s hair or the cadence of their voice is enough to remember them by.  The clean wet smell of fresh snow and the whisper of waves lapping against stones are better than dates and times.   

Gaby puts all the photographs back in their original order and puts them back in her pocket.  She doesn’t want to think about what it means that Napoleon kept them for all these years.  She doesn’t want to think about what it means that he left them behind now.   

She switches lines at Baker Street and takes the Northern to Finchley Road, where she hops off the tube and walks a few streets over to her flat.  Cold London November whips around her, a chill that bites, the threat of rain heavy in the sky.  Gaby’s landlord, a doughty old man named Chestwick who survived the Blitzkrieg by being too stubborn to recognize that a house had collapsed on top of him, grumbles a  _hullo_ when she passes his desk.   

She takes the lift to her flat and opens the door, blindly, and starts throwing together a traveling bag.  A few dresses, a set of loose, dark clothes, a trio of scarves.  One pair each of boots, flats, and heels.  An enormous sweater she stole from Illya last year in Kiev and a threadbare white undershirt she stole from Napoleon in Lisbon.   

Gaby grabs 5,000 euros, Marie Donadieu’s passport, and a few books she’s been meaning to read.  She’s in a cab on her way to Heathrow in less than fifteen minutes.  The cab driver makes small talk and Gaby puts on Marie’s voice again to play her part.  Forty-five minutes after she called and bought plane tickets, Marie Donadieu is meeting her husband at the front desk and reminding him to get out his passport.   

Marie and Claude get through security without any problems, though the loading crew asks what on earth Mr. Donadieu is carrying that makes his bag so heavy—it’s guns—and within another hour they’re on a plane heading south.   

“This is too easy,” Illya grumbles, once they’re settled in and airborne.  Marie and her husband always fly first class.  They like the privacy.  After the stewardess has offered them both wine—Illya declines, but Gaby accepts a glass of red—and they are left on their own, Gaby and Illya let the Donadieus fade back into the background.   

“Our identities are good,” Gaby says.  On paper the Donadieus are exemplary.  They have French and British citizenship.  Claude is a historian who regularly consults at Oxford and Eton.  Marie raises money for the Catholic church.  They travel often, are polite and warm with hotel staff and airplane stewardesses, and tip well to be left alone.   

“Cowboy’s identity must be good too,” Illya says.  Most of his earlier bad temper has vanished.  He’s either let it go or he’s hiding it, and Illya doesn’t let anything go.  “No one thought anything of Remy Pascal getting on a plane and flying away.”   

“He’s been a spy for twelve years,” says Gaby.  “I would assume that most of his identities are good.”  

Illya snorts.  “I think we should find his old fence.”  He digs a file out of his coat and opens it, showing Gaby a picture of a short, pudgy blond man.  “Roland Saint-Claire.  The CIA had file on him.  They think he moved over half of Cowboy’s stolen art but could never prove it.  Napoleon did not give him up.” 

 _Roland Saint-Claire._ The pudgy little man looks more like an artist or a professor than a fence, with his soft face and his bad haircut, his wide, slightly uneven eyes.  Perhaps that’s why he’s never been caught.   

Gaby nods.  “Roland first,” she agrees.  “I want to talk to some of his waitress friends too, and that little forger he introduced us to on the Thierry job.  What’s her name?  Bella?  Bernadette?” 

“Bella,” Illa says.  “We will need to establish timeline.  Figure out what names Napoleon could be wearing, and where he would go.  I think we can rule out him trying to hide in America.” 

Gaby thinks of the file on Napoleon’s countertop, the CIA demanding that he be handed back over to them like Napoleon was a stray dog, prone to bite.  “He won’t go back while Sanders is alive,” Gaby agrees.  She’s glad that Illya can put aside his anger at Napoleon’s betrayal—at Gaby’s indecision, at the mess in Beirut—to focus on the job.  “Where does he like to go?” 

“Paris,” Illya says, holding up a finger.  “Venice.”  He adds another.  “Prague, Barcelona, anywhere along the Mediterranean.  He liked Tokyo very much.”   

Gaby nods slowly, thinking hard.  “We should look where he  _wouldn’t_ go, too,” she says.  “The cold places, the dirtier cities.  Rome, back to Sao Paulo, Dublin.  He might go to Hong Kong or Beijing.  His Mandarin’s good and he’s been working on his Cantonese.”   

Napoleon will want to hide in plain sight; somewhere with crowds, with multiple ways out of a tight corner.  Somewhere where white men are not too uncommon, where he wouldn’t be a novelty.  Somewhere with a rich elite, so Napoleon could continue to live in the comfort he’s accustomed to.  

Paris is a good place to start.   

The flight from London to Paris is very short.  They’re landing almost before Gaby’s finished her glass of wine, Illya tucking his pictures away, both of them bringing the Donadieus back to the fore.  

“How was your flight, Mrs. Donadieu?” the stewardess asks, taking Gaby’s empty glass.  

Gaby smiles.  “Wonderful, thank you,” she says.  “I think Mr. Donadieu even managed to get some work done.”   

They disembark quickly, collecting their bags, and are almost to the airport’s doors and its fleet of cabs when a young man in a crisp uniform comes jogging up, a piece of paper clutched in his hand.   

“ _Monsieur_ Donadieu?” he asks.   

Gaby keeps her face politely disinterested, but Illya’s mask cracks, for a moment.  The whole point of the Donadieus is that no one is supposed to know them.  They don’t exist off paper.   

“ _Oui,”_ Illya finally says.  His French is pretty good too, his Russian accent finally dropped after six weeks of Napoleon refusing to speak to him in anything but perfect French.  “ _Je_ _suis_ Donadieu.”   

“ _Une_ _lettre_ _, monsieur,”_ says the man, proffering the piece of paper.   

“ _Merci.”_ Illya trades the letter for a few ten-franc notes.  He doesn’t read it, instead opening the door and holding it for Gaby, hailing a cab with practiced ease.  Gaby’s heart hammers in her throat.   

Napoleon knew about the Donadieus.  He’d helped Illya and Gaby establish them, maintain them; no one was better at breathing life into fake people than Napoleon.  He could make even the most absurd, outlandish false identity as real and believable as flesh and blood.   

 _Does Napoleon know we’re here?_ Gaby wonders.  She looks around, trying to spot him in the crowd of arrivals and departures.   _Was he waiting for us?  Have we been made?_  

Illya flags down a cab and opens the door for Gaby, taking her bag and throwing it in the trunk.  By the time he slips into the cab beside Gaby, the piece of paper has disappeared.   

“I thought you might like your book, my love,” Illya says in French, passing one of the books Gaby brought without looking up from his own newspaper, which he unfolds with a practiced flourish.   

“Thank you, dear,” Gaby says.   

The book Illya picked is a le Carré.  The new one, which Gaby hasn’t had a chance to read yet;  _The Looking Glass War._ Very subtle.   

Illya gives the cab driver the address of a house in Hôtel-de-Ville.  The cabbie nods and leaves them alone.  Illya buries his nose in his paper.  Gaby flips open her book, searching for the bookmark Illya will have left in between the pages.  He hates turning down the corners to mark his place.  

She finds the page and starts to read.  Illya is not so crass as to have left the piece of paper in the pages; that’s sloppy spycraft.  In between putting the bags away and handing Gaby the book, he will have underlined the letters and words he needs to in faint pencil; when Gaby gets a moment away from prying eyes, she’ll erase them, and it will be like the message was never left at all.   

 _C,_ Gaby reads, searching out Illya’s hasty work.   _I.  A._  

Her heart sinks. An underlined  _B,_ then an  _urn,_ followed by a  _ned_ all underlined together.   _Kill_ is underlined as one word, as in  _on,_ and the last is spelled out,  _s, I, g, h, t._  

 _CIA burned,_ Illya’s message reads.   _Kill on sight._  

Gaby doesn’t cry or curse, but she wants to.   

The CIA’s burned Napoleon.  Trashed all his CIA-sanctioned identities, purged his records, cut off any money that they knew about.  They’ve put out an order to kill him on sight.  The message at the airport must have come from Waverly, then.  He’s warning them.   

She and Illya have to get to Napoleon first because if the CIA or any of their allies—MI6, Mossad, god, half the intelligence agencies on the planet—do, they’ll kill him.   

Gaby closes her book gently and sets it on the seat beside her, in the space between her and Illya.  Her heart hammers in her chest.   

Is Sanders out there now, landing in some airport somewhere, hunting Napoleon like a bloodhound?  What about the KGB?  Mossad?   

What about the rest of UNCLE?  

 _We_ _have to_ _find him first,_ Gaby thinks, hard and vicious.  She digs her nails into the palm of her hand hard enough to draw pricks of blood. The pain is good.  It helps her think.  It helps the beginnings of a plan form in her mind, each piece falling into place like the gears of an engine.   _We have to._  

She opens her palm.  She thinks,  _We will._  

 

 _then_  

Despite all the odds, despite each other, Section One continued to do good work.  The affair in Istanbul ended tidily enough, even with the gunfire, and their next mission in Bolivia went off without a hitch, smooth and well-oiled.  Waverly gave them two weeks off for their success and then sent them to Hong Kong, where they took down a triad that trafficked everything from illegal weapons to opium to girls, and from there they found and danced with THRUSH in Kiev, in New York, and in Rio de Janeiro.  

They had a few close calls, of course.  In Kiev Illya was caught and held by a pair of THRUSH doctors for six hours.  In New York none of them could figure out how to diffuse a particularly vicious bomb and had to toss it into the Hudson River.  In Rio Gaby and Illya got caught in a... compromising position by the city’s one honest policeman and spent the night in separate jail cells.   

But in all of those missions, they had  _won._ Section One had succeeded, each and every time.   

So by the time Gaby was in Marrakesh on the tail of a THRUSH-sponsored arms dealer and listening to Solo get shot over their comms, she figured, grimly, that Section One had been due for some bad luck.   

In her ear, Solo wheezed painfully.  The gunshot had been preternaturally loud.  Gaby had felt Solo get shot like a kick in her own teeth, like a fist to her own ribs.  She was frozen.  Illya, sitting across from her in the dingy kitchen of their safehouse, had a wild, startled expression on his face.   

 “Ah,” Solo said.  There was another gunshot, louder than the first.  Gaby flinched.  Solo said, “Fucker.”  He’d shot his attacker, then.  The noise of the city filtered through the comms.  The riotous thrum of Djemaa el Fna, drums and shouts and snatches of music; the rattling buzz of cars bouncing over cobblestones; more gunshots, harsh as firecrackers, and Solo’s wheezing breath.   

“I could use an extraction, if you’re listening,” Solo said.  He paused.  Somewhere nearby the drums picked up, a frantic rhythm crashing through the comms, scattering half a dozen plans before they could even begin to form.  “Quickly, if you can.” 

“How did he get shot?”  Gaby whispered. She didn’t understand.  Solo’s route from the Bahia Palace to their safehouse outside the market should have been  _clear_ —Gaby and Illya spent hours clearing it, diverting THRUSH’s attention across the city, making sure that Solo’s route through the city was as covered and as safe as possible.  “Where did—we  _covered_ him.” 

“We will cover him again,” Illya said.  His face was white with fear.  “You—I will draw fire.  You get Cowboy.  He is not far.” 

Solo’s breath rattled in Gaby’s ear, harsh and hollow, like Solo was already just a husk.  Gaby nodded.  “Don‘t get shot,” she said.  She grabbed Illya’s hand as he stood, reached for his guns.  Illya caught her, his fingers warm against hers.   

They hadn’t stopped sleeping together.  She’d  _meant_ to, after Istanbul.  But then Illya had bought her flowers in Bolivia.  Then in Hong Kong Gaby’d made coffee the way Illya liked it and he’d smiled at her so widely it had taken her out at the knees.  Then in Kiev he’d given her one of his sweaters to wear, soft and thick with his cologne, and in New York she’d taught him how to fix a broken V8 engine, and in Rio de Janeiro they’d fallen asleep on the balcony of their shared hotel room, hands laced together.  

Gaby was getting attached.  She knew she was.  She knew it was dangerous.   

But she  _wanted_ Illya.  She wanted him.  She wanted his mouth on hers, she wanted his hands on her hips, she wanted his cock inside her.  She wanted his sweaters and his cologne and his stupid fussy coffee, two creams, two sugars, a sprinkle of cinnamon.   

She didn’t want him to die in the streets of Marrakesh.   

“I will not get shot,” Illya promised.  He squeezed her fingers, grabbed a handgun, a rifle, and a ridiculously large elephant gun, slinging the last two over his shoulders, and vanished out the door.   

Gaby took two seconds to panic, listening to Solo’s pained breath in her ear, and then she grabbed a gun of her own, took a moment to pinpoint where Solo should be on her map of Djemaa el Fna, and followed Illya.   

Illya was already gone, probably up on the rooftops picking a sniper’s nest.  Gaby pulled her scarf up around her head, hiding her hair, and jogged down the street.  She rounded corners as fast as she dared.  Marrakesh was not the safest city for a woman alone even without THRUSH infesting it with guns like trigger-happy rats.   

In her ear, Solo continued to wheeze.  He hadn’t moved very far; Gaby could still hear the strange after-echo of market music behind Solo’s muffled sounds of pain.   

He hadn’t asked for help again.  

“I’m coming,” she muttered.  The comms weren’t two-way; they only picked up sound from one of the devices Solo wore.   

She hoped he knew that they were coming for him.   

Overhead and a few blocks over, Illya’s elephant gun went off with an impressive  _boom._ That gun was a .505 calibre.  Gaby had seen it punch through sheet metal.  She hoped Illya’d found a THRUSH agent to shoot at.  She hoped Solo was still alive.   

Gaby rounded corners, dodged past stalls and cabs, wove through men in long robes and women in suits, and found herself in the middle of Djemaa el Fna.  The marketplace was overwhelming even without her partner dying in her ear; with Solo, his breath coming shorter and harder every minute, it was nearly too much.  Music and spice and jostling elbows, people shouting in a dozen languages, packed in as tightly as sardines despite the late hour.  A line of drummers took up a stretch of space, their arms shining with oil, pounding out a wild rhythm.   

There were eyes everywhere.   

Gaby pulled her scarf tighter, slowed her pace even though she ached to run.  Solo was dying somewhere nearby, but if Gaby ran, if she drew attention to herself, she‘d bring THRUSH right to him to finish off the job.   

Illya’s elephant gun boomed again, timed with the drummers’ deep downstroke.  The noise rose and clamored inside Gaby’s belly, thrummed like a heartbeat.   

Gaby oriented herself towards the setting sun, laying out a map of the city against the map of Solo’s route back to the safehouse in her mind.   

 _I know where to find him,_ she told herself, trying to fight back the rising tide of fear clawing at her throat.  Solo would be fine.  He‘d be fine.  Gaby and Illya would get him out.  

She meandered through the market, stopping here and there for a few seconds at a time to examine seller’s wares.  She bought a bruised banana that she handed off to a dirty little boy two stalls down, haggled for a moment over a bright red silk scarf.   

She bought a dark, loose robe for Napoleon, throwing too much money at the gleeful vendor, and pressed on.  She took a right, then a left, then two rights and a final left, ending up in a dim alley, sooty bricks on all sides.   

Illya took another shot.  It rolled across the rooftops like thunder.   

“Solo?“  Gaby hissed, searching the shadows.  She didn’t see anyone.  A few piles of trash, a broken-down cardboard box, an old, threadbare rug.  “Solo?”  She switched to French, reaching for the code words they‘d all come up with one night while hiding from a blizzard in Kiev, pressed up together in a shack with no fireplace.  “ _Demain_ _,_ _dès_ _l'aube_ _, à_ _l'heure_ _où_ _blanchit_ _la_ _campagne_ _, Je_ _partirai_ _.”_  

The alley was full of silence.  She didn’t see anything living.   

 _I can’t have gotten it wrong,_ she thought.  Gaby’s memory was good—she knew maps.  She knew the route she’d planned for Solo.  It should have been  _safe._ Illya took one more thunderous shot with his elephant gun, then switched to the higher, sharper  _crack_ of his rifle.   

“ _Vois-tu_ _, je_ _sais_ _que_ _tu_ _m'attends_ _,”_ Gaby pressed.  “ _Tu_ _m’attends_ _.”_  

The alley was quiet, and then Solo said, from where he had hunkered down behind the ratty old rug, “ _J'irai_ _par_ _la_ _forêt_ _,_ _j'irai_ _par la_ _montagne_ _._ _Je ne_ _puis_ — _”_ he stopped to cough, wet and bloody. 

Gaby’s heart leapt to her throat.  “Solo,” she said, crouching down.  The light was bad but she could still see his smile, his crooked teeth, his lips dark with blood.   

He was hurt.   

Gaby dragged the rug off him and pulled back the collar of his shirt.  Her fingers came away wet.  “Where are you shot?”  she asked.  “How many times?” 

“Just once,” Solo grunted.  His voice was thin and brittle, like the bone of an animal left out in the open air.  “Under my collarbone.  Right side.”   

Gaby swore softly.  He’d need a doctor, unless by some miracle his ribs had caught the bullet and kept it out of his lung.  Solo’s breath was weak, but it didn’t sound as though his lung had deflated or was filling with blood.  Gaby’s fingers found the edge of the wound.  Solo whined in pain but she didn’t let up.   

He was still bleeding.  Gaby did the math in her head.  He’d been shot ten, fifteen minutes ago.  The wound wasn’t clotting.  His blood was slick and hot under her hands.  He’d been holding his own fist closed over the wound, but it hadn’t helped.     

Gaby grabbed his hand again and brought it back to his chest, over the bullet hole.  “Don’t let go,” she snapped.  Solo’s eyes were closed, but he pushed down obediently. 

Gaby pulled the scarf she’d bought at the market out of her pocket and tore it into two long strips.  One she balled up and shoved into Solo’s wound, ignoring his shout of pain.  The other strip she wound around his chest, pulling it as tight as she could, and tied it off.  She tested it with a sharp tug.  It would hold.   

Satisfied that Solo probably wouldn’t bleed to death in the next ten minutes, Gaby leaned back.  Overhead there was more gunfire, sharp and regular, farther away now.  Illya was retreating, leading whoever had attacked Solo away.   

Gaby had to get him out of here.   

“Can you stand?”  she asked.   

Solo groaned in response.   

“Don’t be dramatic,” Gaby said, to hide her spike of fear.  Solo was tough.  She knew that.  He played at being soft and defenseless—he once joked that he’d give up state secrets over a stubbed toe—but she’d read Illya’s report of what happened in Uncle Rudy’s lair.  Of the chair, the electricity, the pliers.  Solo, Illya had written, hadn’t said a word to Rudy, not even as his blood was boiling. 

Solo cracked one eye open and glared up at Gaby, his pupil huge and dark.   “You get shot in the chest and see how good your mood is,” he snapped.  His eye flashed.   

Gaby blinked, surprised.  It looked like Solo wasn’t quite ready to die yet.  She didn’t think she’d ever seen him  _angry_ before.  Solo—well.  He was a bit too false and insincere for anger.  But maybe that was all an act too, a game he played with Gaby and Illya, just like the games he played with his marks.     

 _Good,_ she thought.  She—didn't want him to die.  Solo was obnoxious, sure; he was loud and flashy and entirely too fond of riffling around in other people’s things.  He drank and flirted with everything that moved.  He picked pockets compulsively. He lied with every other breath he took.   

But he was kind, too.  Clever, witty, a good cook, a decent teacher.  He took the time to teach Gaby how to crack safes and fleece marks.  When he cooked breakfast for the three of them he always made too many pancakes.  He knew that Illya liked the blueberry ones but Gaby wouldn’t touch one unless it had chocolate chips.   

He was her partner.   

Gaby wasn’t going to lose him either.   

“Can you stand?”  she repeated.   

Solo huffed, closed his eye again.  He took a few shallow breaths, then nodded.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Give me a minute.”  

Gaby gave him ten seconds.    

Using the bricks behind him, Solo hauled himself to his feet.  In the dim light he looked like half a corpse, but he managed to get upright, braced against the wall, panting heavily.  His face was grey with pain.   

“Can you walk?” 

Solo shook his head.  That scared Gaby more than anything—Solo never shut up.   

“Lean on me,” Gaby said, without thinking.  She was going to get him out of here.  “Put this on first.”   

Solo gave her a flat look.  Gaby huffed and conceded the point.  “Just hold still then,” she said.  She shook out the dark robe she’d paid too much for and wrestled Solo into it, hoping the cloth was dark enough to hide the spreading bloodstains.   

“Here,” Gaby said, tugging the robe closed and offering her shoulders.  “Lean on me.”  

Solo looked at her for a moment, the color of his eyes very pale and very fine in the dark.  His lips were pressed tightly together.  He nodded again, letting Gaby shove herself up under his arm on his bad side, his weight falling heavy across her shoulders.   

She grunted.  “Shit, you’re heavy,” she said.  He wasn’t as tall as Illya, but he was broader and made up mostly of solid, dense muscle.  Gaby worked with giants.   

“You’re going to have to walk some,” Gaby said.  “I can’t carry you.  But I won’t let you fall.”   

Solo hissed between his teeth but did as he was told.  For once in his life, he did as he was told.  He was leaning too hard on Gaby but that didn’t stop her.  Together they got out of the alley, took a left, then a right, then two lefts and a final right to end up back in the Djemaa el Fna.   

Something about Solo’s posture—or Gaby’s—or maybe the steady, faint bursts of gunfire in the distance, Illya drawing their enemies away—kept most of the marketgoers at a distance.  Gaby was glad.  Solo didn’t look like he could stand much longer.   

“Come on,” Gaby said, her own lungs burning under the strain.  “Come on, just a little farther.”  

Solo said nothing.   

They made it back to the safe house, eventually.  To Gaby the walk seemed to take decades.   Every step took a year.  Solo leaned harder against her with every block.  By the end he was barely upright, held together by Gaby’s determination and his own will, grey-faced and swaying.  The gunfire had cut out now.  Either Illya was out of bullets or he was taking his time and using his hands.  Looking at Solo’s face, ragged with pain, Gaby hoped that Illya was using his hands.  

She got him inside the safehouse and looked the door behind her.  Solo didn’t make it to the kitchen or the tiny living room.  He folded to the floor before Gaby had even finished locking the door, his gasps harsh and loud in the tiny house.   

Gaby leapt over his legs to get to the first add kit.  When she rushed back to Solo’s side he was already half-unconscious, a hand pressed over his wound, legs akimbo on the chipped tile floor.   

“Solo,“ Gaby said, fumbling for bandages.  “Solo, it‘s going to be alright.  I need you to stay awake.  Solo?  Can you hear me?  Solo?” 

Solo wheezed for a moment, then opened his eyes again.  He smiled at Gaby, tiredly.  “I think,” he rasped, “that you can call me Napoleon, my dear.”    

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More History Notes:
> 
> 1\. John le Carre's novel _The Looking Glass War_ was published in June, 1965. It's one of his George Smiley novels (a la _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ , though published earlier) and it's very good. Gaby reads spy novels because she thinks they're hilarious.  
> 2\. The most famous airport in Paris is, of course, Charles de Gaulle, but it wasn't built and opened until 1974. Paris-Le Bourget Airport is much older and a good bit smaller; it was built in 1919. It served as an international hub until 1977.  
> 3\. Hotel-de-Ville is a name for the 4th _arrondisement_ (district) of Paris. Notre-Dame is in Hotel-de-Ville, as well as numerous cafes, hotels, houses, et cetera. The Seine runs through it.  
>  4\. Djemaa el-Fna (also spelled Jemaa el Fnaa) is a marketplace in the old quarter Marrakesh. It's very old, and is used as an informal city center by locals and tourists. It is traditionally filled with artisans, merchants, and entertainers.  
> 5\. Bahia Palace is one of the newer palaces in Marrakesh, relatively speaking; it was built in the 19th century in the Islamic and Moroccan styles. It _is_ within walking distance of the Djemaa el-Fna.  
>  6\. [ Elephant guns are the real deal, y'all. Illya is probably using a modified .505 Gibbs.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_gun)  
> 7\. Translations: Gaby and Solo are using Victor Hugo's "Demain, dès l'aube" (Tomorrow, at dawn) as code phrases. 
> 
> Gaby's line is "Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne, Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends." (Tomorrow, at dawn, at the hour when the countryside whitens, I will depart. You see, I know you wait for me.)
> 
> Solo's line is "J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne. Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps." (I will go through the forest and over the mountains. I cannot stay far from you any longer.) He doesn't quite get all the way to the end, there, but he does try.


End file.
